Apples
by bsc9999
Summary: Merry and Pippin. Best friends forever. My take on their first meeting. Oneshot.


**Author's Note: Oh, no. Not another fanfiction in an entirely new fandom. First there was Gordon Korman, then the Chronicles of Narnia, and then Codename: Kids Next Door…and now Lord of the Rings?! Come on, right? Well, anyway, I totally fell in love with the movies and with the books, so I got to writing a fanfiction. Does anyone else love Merry and Pippin as much as I do? I don't think so. **

16-year-old Meriadoc Brandybuck sat in front of his house, reading a book he had recently received for his birthday. It was a book of poems from Hobbiton, and he rather liked it.

He took a bite of the apple in his hand, holding his book in the other. Several more apples were sitting next to him, arranged in neat little stacks.

"Hallo." A small voice came from a ways down the road.

Meriadoc, or Merry, as he was more often called, smiled at the young hobbit coming up the road toward him.

"I'm Peregrin Took, but you can call me Pippin of Pip or whatever you want to call me, and I'm your cousin and do you want to play with me?" The blond curly-haired hobbit paused and took a breath before starting up again. "And I'm eight years old and I like mushrooms and I'm a Took and I don't live in Buckland and do you want to play with me?"

Merry raised his eyebrows and opened his mouth to reply, but before he could, Peregrin—or Pippin or Pip or whatever—said, "Oh and my mum said to bring these to your mum so here!" The small hobbit held out a basket. "I didn't even look at it no not once!"

Merry took the basket, said, "Tell your mum I said thank you," to the little hobbit, and laid the basket at his side, next to the apples.

Merry expected Pippin to go away after that, but instead, the younger hobbit sat himself down next to Merry, saying cheerfully, "My mum said I could stay and play with you."

"Oh." Merry looked at the younger hobbit over the top of his book.

"Yup, yup, so what do you want to play?"

"Um…"

"Perfect!" Pippin paused, as if in thought. "But how do you play that?"

Merry just sat quietly for a moment, as Pippin waited on expectantly. Then Merry said, "Do you want to hear some poems from my book?"

Pippin cocked his head to the side in curiosity, then, not knowing what else to do, nodded eagerly.

"Okay then," Merry said. He cleared his throat and began with the first poem he found of his liking.

"Tee, tum, tiddly dee

Some tea for you and tea for me

Tee, tum, tiddly dee

Wait, teatime's not till after luncheon."

Merry stopped reading, cleared his throat again, and said, "That's a funny poem. Kind of strange, if you ask me." Merry looked down at Pippin, who sat transfixed beside him. The young hobbit had pressed himself to the older hobbit's side. "So, did you like it?" Merry asked.

Pippin nodded. He liked the poem. He thought it was funny, and it talked about teatime, one of his favorite meals of the day except for second breakfast or maybe elevensies. He yearned for more poems; particularly ones about food. Mushrooms, maybe? He hoped there were poems about mushrooms. But not puppies. Pippin didn't like puppies. Because one of Farmer Maggot's puppies had bitten him in the foot earlier for trying to steal some of the mushrooms on Farmer Maggot's farm. But he digressed.

Merry, as if reading his mind, smiled at the younger hobbit and asked, "Do you want to hear more poems? About food, maybe?"

Pippin shook his head, and Merry was surprised, until Pippin said simply, "I want to read."

For a hobbit, eight years old was a young age for learning to read. The youngest was maybe ten or eleven, maybe nine, but not eight.

But though Merry knew this, he did not doubt his younger cousin, so he handed the book to Pippin, saying, "Here, Pip. You can read this one." He pointed to a short, easy-looking poem in the book.

Pippin looked for a while at the book in curiosity, then asked, "How do I read?"

Merry pointed at a word and said, "You sound out the letters. Look…"

For the two hobbits, the rest of the day was spent teaching the younger to read. As the day went by, the apples were slowly being eaten by both Merry and Pippin.

When night fell, Merry said, "You better get along home, Pip."

Pippin's face fell. "Oh. Right. But I just learned how to read this, though!"

"It's okay, we can finish later," Merry said, wrapping his cousin in a large hug.

At that moment, a girl came down the street. It was one of Pippin's older sisters. "Come, Peregrin," she called to him. "Time to get home."

Pippin gave his older cousin one last satisfactory look, took a bite out of the apple in his hand, and ran off after his sister, waving behind at Merry.

Merry smiled and waved back, then when Pippin was out of view, Merry gathered his things and headed into his home.

Once inside, Merry looked into the basket and smiled.

Mushrooms.

--------

"Hallo, Merry!" The next day, Merry was sitting outside reading his book again, apples piled next to him. It was Pippin who had spoken, as Pippin had just arrived. "Can we read more today?"

Merry gestured to the grassy area at his side.

---------

Pippin came back every day, and every day he came back, Merry would teach him how to read. It was the same poem every day, until Pippin learned it. When Pippin learned to read that one, Merry would move to the next poem, then the next.

Because of Merry, Pippin became a clever hobbit very quickly.

--------

Pippin, 26 years old, and Merry, 34 years old, walked along the path in Buckland. They were walking along the edge of the forest, which was beautiful at that time of the year, and they were talking.

They had remained friends for a long time, and they were never apart. When people said things about either Merry or Pippin, they would say, "Merry and Pippin," or "Pippin and Merry," but no one would say just "Merry" or just "Pippin" without saying the other name.

They had become the troublemakers of the Shire, and whenever someone was robbed of maybe a handful of crops or a small packet of pipe-weed, it was all blamed on the pair. As younger children, Merry had been dragging Pippin into the silliest things, but Pippin had obediently obliged, seeing Merry as an older brother and wanting to impress him. And whatever trouble Pippin would get himself into, Merry would always get him out of it—or be there to accept the punishment with him, together.

But this one day, the two were not set out to do mischief. They were walking along together, conversing quietly—or, most of the time in Pippin's case, not so quietly.

"Hey, Merry, do you remember when you and I first met, all those years ago?" Pippin asked his cousin. He had run ahead of Merry and was now walking backward to face his friend.

"You mean eighteen," Merry said, "to be precise. And yes, of course I do," Merry kicked a pebble into the woods casually.

"Yes, yes, of course. Well, anyway," Pippin said, still walking backward, "I was remembering, and then I got to thinking."

"Well, that's good," Merry said, "Wouldn't want you getting soft."

"Yes, yes, but that's not the point! The point is, I still remember it!" Pippin exclaimed.

"Remember what?" Merry asked. "You didn't specify."

Pippin sighed, clearly frustrated, and started to recite a poem.

The very poem that Merry had taught him to read, long ago.

"The little boy sat in the field one day

And he looked around him yonder and near

He thought about his home and friends

And his mother's words came to light his ears

He heard her say 'Come on home now please

I've got some food for you

Come home and we'll have another meal today

Before you turn into a buffoon of a fool.'

The boy thought of his home that day

And he said, 'Enough of my adventure

I'll return home now and eat some today

For I've gotten rather hungry as an extra measure.'"

Pippin finished the poem and bowed to his cousin. He was still walking backwards, rather briskly. "There, you see?"

Merry shook his head and said, "To this day, I wonder why I gave you that poem. That was more difficult than any of the others."

Pippin merely shook his shoulders and shrugged. He was still walking backwards, even quicker than before. "I don't know, how can I be sure?" he asked.

Very suddenly, even before Merry had time to see what would happen, Pippin, who was still walking backwards, tripped over a tree root on the ground. He landed with a splash in a large puddle in a hole on the hard stone ground.

Merry laughed, and Pippin laughed with him too. As Pippin got up to dry off, Merry said, very simply, "Catch."

And Pippin reached up to catch a well-aimed apple.


End file.
